


Those Who Speak

by Toomanynorns



Category: Ender Series - Orson Scott Card
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-13
Updated: 2014-02-13
Packaged: 2018-01-12 06:32:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1182998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toomanynorns/pseuds/Toomanynorns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some loosely tied-together ficlets in Tumblr's communal Speaker Alai AU, in which Ender and Alai meet again years later, both Speakers for the Dead in their own right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It has been at least a thousand years, maybe more, on the outside. Ender almost doesn’t recognize him, incongruous as he looks on this African colony. Alai fits in too well here, among Muslims. He used to stand out, between cold metal plates, between cold calculating children. Now it’s only the solid line of his shoulders, still military, the way Ender’s are still military, that makes him stand out.

They stare at each other across the distance for a long moment. Ender knows he sticks out: he just spent three months on a planet that barely had any sun, any trace of a tan has long since vanished from his body.

"Salaam," he finally says.

Alai nods. It’s a jerky motion, as if he’s startled.

He doesn’t echo the word.

"Tea?" he asks instead.

It may be the most awkward tea house conversation of all time. They sit across from each other and fall silent as often as they speak. Alai is a Speaker now, Ender has gathered. He is more surprised about that than Alai is about the fact Ender has become the same. 

Alai is even more unsurprised to find out Ender has only been here for a day, and does not intend to stay longer. “That’s just like you,” he says. “I’ve been here for two emossin’ years.”

But they talk, and they keep talking. Something in both of them recognizes that an effort must be made here, even if it fails— they aren’t two ships passing in the night but two glaciers, shoving past each other, trying to mitigate the damage.

Or maybe that’s too fatalistic a thought. Ender’s not sure.

They make arrangements to do so again, a week later. And again, a week after that. Slowly their ice melts, but it’s rough going. 

On the fourth week, Alai gets angry, and shouts recriminations; Ender comes close to crying, but long-held and long-cherished calm keeps him from it. Somehow the lack of vulnerability makes Alai even angrier.

They don’t see each other again the next week.

The week after that, Valentine invites him to their apartment. Ender finds him sitting at the dinner table, looking defeated in a way he’s never seen— well, that’s not true.

"He’s coming with us," Valentine says.

"I thought he—"

"He’s coming with us," she says again, firmly. "I won’t take any sass from you about it."

Ender throws up his hands and walks into the next room.

It’s another week until he and Alai talk again. By then, though, it’s necessary: Valentine wasn’t idle in her threat, and now Ender runs into him every morning when he’s doing morning prayer on the floor of their dinky space ferry.

Glaciers take time to come apart. That's the truth of it, outside of children's fairytales.


	2. Chapter 2

At first, they argued. They argued about so many things that sometimes Alai questioned his decision to stay by Ender’s side - they quarreled so often that sometimes it was only the soothing words of Valentine Wiggin that steered Alai back to calmer shores.

Alai could not have expected that it would slow to a trickle. He didn’t realize it at first: he still voiced his opinions and Ender voiced his. It occurred to him in slow steps, one conversation after another, that the malice had gone and the pain had softened and smoothed so that it no longer informed every well-chosen syllable.

And now he realizes that they are quiet. Ender sits against his pillow, his desk in hand, quietly pouring through files about their next destination. Alai sits at the edge of the bed, his thumb rolling along the inside of his palm as he processes the emotions released by his latest Speaking. Neither says a word, and it is comfortable, and that’s new. There used to be stubbornness pouring out of Ender’s quiet; he’s even willing to admit that there may have been contrariness in his own.

But now it’s just comfortable. Like old friends.

He looks behind him and sees the light of Ender’s desk play across Ender’s features, shading them with odd shadows unnatural to the eye. But they are Ender’s, not the Speaker’s, not the contours of the face of a boy who slid away from him into the darkness. Just Ender, twenty-eight and two thousand years old, his mouth occasionally twitching as he reads something interesting or amusing.

The name roll out of Alai’s mouth before he even realizes he wants to say it. “Ender?”

Ender looks up. His brow creases.

Alai thinks about backing out. They have equilibrium now. Messing that up would be really stupid.

"Can I touch you?" he asks, because in spite of everything he’s just seen, Alai is still a bravely stupid eight-year-old at heart and he’s not about to let sense stop him— to a point. Only a suicidal idiot would touch Andrew Wiggin without asking.

He can see the words what, where form on Ender’s lips, but the sound never actually comes out. Instead Ender says, “Sure,” a quiet noise laden with questions that he’s obviously decided against asking.

Alai slides up until his own back is against the headrest. Then, quietly, carefully - so Ender can see - he slips his arm in the space between Ender’s spine and the pillow, curling it around his waist. That’s as much as he dares to do. Anything more, and he might feel inclined to make a joke to diffuse the tension; he senses this isn’t actually a tension he wants to lose.

A few long seconds pass by them both.

Then Ender’s head finds Alai’s shoulder. The sheets shift beneath them with a crisp little noise that fades almost as soon as it occurs. Ender curls up against Alai’s side, adjusts the angle of his desk screen and returns to his quest for information as if nothing earth-shattering has just happened.

Alai fights the urge to let go of a breath, because nothing really has. His arm tingles. It is what it is. So he doesn’t push it any further. The balance between them really is fragile, and so is Alai’s psyche, at least after yesterday’s Speaking.

Maybe tomorrow, he’ll try more.


End file.
